Posted on 06/12/2005 1:40:01 PM PDT by CHARLITE
.Ed Kilgore says that he's got no problem with Howard Dean:
"Every party chair spends a lot of time speaking to Democratic activists, and inevitably serves up a lot of red meat. Dean's recent "controversial" remarks would have been completely unobjectionable, and probably unnoticed, if they had been uttered by his predecessor.
....The media's tendency to distort and then hype Dean's rhetoric is predictable and unavoidable. In a NewDonkey post congratulating the Doctor on his victory in the DNC chair race, I observed that he would be playing by "Hillary Rules," which means exceptional and unavoidable scrutiny of every single word he says.
But Ed, that's a feature, not a bug! I don't want Dean to go over a cliff with this kind of stuff, but his reputation as a straight shooter allows him to say things that other people are only thinking, and his role as party chairman forces the press to pay attention. This is a good thing.
Initially, of course, it doesn't look that way, but guess what happens after the initial firestorm has died out? With news hook in hand, reporters will get to work. Does James Dobson control the agenda of the Republican party? Are Republicans overwhelmingly white? Do party leaders work against the interests of the working class? This is exactly where we'd like the focus to be: on our issues, not theirs. After all, the answers to these questions are inevitably going to be bad for the Republican party.
This is the same thing that happened with the Newsweek/Koran story. At first the White House thought they could get some mileage out of bashing Newsweek, and in the short term they were right. But within a week or two the initial firestorm had flickered out and the tide had turned: reporters had begun investigating the allegations and were starting to write stories about what was really going on at Guantanamo. Within a few weeks, it had gotten so bad that Bush felt it necessary to publicly allude to the possibility of closing down Gitmo altogether.
For my money, the lesson here is that if someone gets the press to pay attention to the issues you want them to pay attention to, it's all good. And if the only way to get them to do that is for Howard Dean to say something incendiary, then that's how the game is played. As long as he doesn't make a daily habit out of this kind of stuff, I think Dean is doing the party a favor.
"Dean's real problem may not be his mouth but his mind-set. He and his aides seemed genuinely mystified at the idea that his characterization of the GOP was a political mistake. But by labeling the other party a bastion of Christianity, he implied that his own was something else—something determinedly secular—at a time when Dean's stated aim is to win the hearts of middle-class white Southerners, many of whom are evangelicals.
In a slide-show presentation at the DNC conference last weekend, polltaker Cornell Belcher focused on why those voters aren't responding to the Democrats' economic message. One reason, he said, is that too many of them see the Democrats as "anti-religion." And why was that? No one asked Dean, who wasn't taking questions from the press.
Nor would he if he had any sense and if he didn't want to compound the damage he has already caused for Democrats in winning back key constituencies that they have lost in recent elections.
Of course, some have decided to stubbornly stick to the plan of "If Only We Can Manage To Get A Little Angrier, We Can Win Elections." Cf. Kevin Drum [http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_06/006485.php]:
HowWeird Dean is a gift from G_D!
Well, they're the party that adores and supports the ACLU, the organization that's trying to rip down a cross on a San Diego hillside and which has declared war on the Boy Scouts for being a religious institution. So yeah, the Democrats have established themselves as the anti-Christ party, no "implies" about it.
I do believe they can't spell either.......HI L ARY
And .. Rush is right again!
He said on his show last week that the dems won't shut Dean up because they like what Dean's saying and they agree with him .. which should tell us what the dems really believe about us.
NO MORE COWTOWING TO THESE IDIOTS IN CONGRESS!!!!
Senatrix Rodman Hitlery: Yes, my apprentice, let the anger take control. I can feel the power of the dark side is strong in you.
Count Cooku: EEEEOOOWIEEEE!
(off to the side) Mannikin Flyswatter: But I thought I was the chosen one.
TO BE CONTINUED IN EPISODE 2008: The Republicans Strike Back
Now I am confused.
The dems claim that the press is in the back pockets of Republicans and the Bush administration yet they virtually admit that the press takes its marching orders from the DNC.
It`s hard to know where they stand moment by moment.
Personally, I think Republicans should stop talking about how wonderful Howard Dean is. That kind of talk is easy to misconstrue. We should just attack the jackass.
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